What About 1779?

Local farm family with customers on typical Saturday at the Market. Photo by Deborah Franke.

This ascribed date of our Market's founding is a fantasy, with no basis in historical fact. In 1779, the village of St. Louis was a walled fortress nearly a mile away from this unadorned spot amongst the town's Common Fields. The villagers led hard, busy lives, and hardly had time to illogically walk a mile out into the wilderness to buy or barter food, when a thriving, well-established Market Square stood just blocks away in the center of town! (This 1779 date is much like the story of a young George Washington chopping down a cherry tree and then not lying about it when asked. These myths resonate with us, they sound good, but they never happened, sorry.) Every historic account indicated that Soulard Market was founded in 1838, and did not exist in any form earlier.